


The Fall of Yesterday

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles), SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angst, Arguing, Artists, Boats and Ships, Career Change, Cephalopods, Children, Fear of Discovery, Gen Is Back On Their Bullshit, Hiding, Hunters & Hunting, Lost Love, M/M, Mild Stabbing, Misunderstandings, New Bullshit This Time, No Actual Space Squids Were Hurt In The Writing Of This Fic, Omega Verse, Original Character(s), Past Eye Trauma, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Presumed Dead, Reunions, Scars, Second Chances, Stupidity, That's Not How The Force Works, the Questionable Parentage of Armitage Hux
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23915950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf/pseuds/SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf
Summary: Seven years after Exegol, a nameless sailor works a thankless job onboard an Arkanis pearl harvester and fails to forget all the things he has lost.When the ship arrives at a new port all he wants to do is find a place to sleep through his shore leave. He might find more than that
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 39
Kudos: 252
Collections: Kylux Titleception 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'd hoped to get this whole fic completed in time for titleception, but then all the everything happened, so here is chapter one. 
> 
> Please note this is an ABO fic, so... Yeah, expect ABO things in later chapters

He knew he was dreaming the instant he opened his eyes. 

There were familiar, smoke obscured constellations wheeling slowly over his head. Every breath he drew into his lungs was hotter than the last, but his skin was so cold he was almost losing feeling in his limbs. Or perhaps that was just the bloodloss.

He was back on Starkiller Base all over again, laying in a snowbank, bleeding out as the planet tore itself apart beneath him. His poor choices had destroyed that super weapon just as completely as they had destroyed every other part of his life.

Hux had been the one to save him then—on the orders of Snoke, true, but Snoke hadn’t told the General to hide a tracker on his belt. Given that Hux had once responded to a request to capture a droid safely by carpet bombing the area, the fact that Hux had rescued him at all proved that he had truly cared.

The snow beneath his body turned to ashy barren stones. The heat inside him was the burning of radiation and long exposure to the poisonous atmosphere of Exogol.

Hux couldn’t save him now. 

Hux was dead. Pryde had executed him.

Had the General’s body been jettisoned? Or incinerated? Or was it here on this planet with him, laying amongst the shattered remains of the Steadfast, wherever that had fallen?

He would never know. He’d never thought to put a tracker of his own on Hux.

There was a sharp pain in his hip as someone kicked his hammock. The ‘stars’ above him resolved into droplets of condensation on the hull above his head. 

“You fucking stink,” a figure muttered. It kicked the hammock again before shambling away. “Get a shower or get into the sea, don’t make us all breathe your Alpha stench.”

Whoever it had been wasn’t worth the effort of focusing his bleary eye to identify them. 

Although the dream had faded, the uncomfortable combination of inner heat and outer cold remained—fever sweat soaking through his clothes in the night most likely. He felt disgusting. 

As tempting as falling into the sea might be at times, he opted to just go stand on deck. If he closed his eyes the waves crashing over his face felt almost like drowning.

* * *

He leaned against the ship’s railing, breathing deep to fill his lungs with the smell of salt while the ocean spray washed him clean. Or as clean as any being could get when they worked aboard an Arkanis pearl harvester.

When he’d first joined the crew—over two years ago now—the old timers had told him that everyone got accustomed to the cephalopod stench eventually. In his case that wasn’t true, the smell lingered at the edge of his perception just like the Force had once done. 

He had no idea if the rest of the crew had grown accustomed to it or not—they no longer bothered to speak to him. No one did. His silence unnerved them.

Eight hundred and seventeen days had passed since he had last spoken to another sentient being. Not quite half of the seven years since he ‘died’ on Exogol.

He wasn’t mute. He had deliberately scarred his neck to add to the effectiveness of the lie, but he could have spoken if he wanted to do so.

He simply didn’t have anything to say.

He was no longer sure that he’d  _ ever  _ had anything worth saying—that was something Hux had told him more than once. Perhaps Hux had been right on that matter, just as the General had ultimately been proved right on so many other things. He hadn’t been fit to rule the First Order, he hadn’t been special, he hadn’t tried hard enough. 

He closed his eyes. Breathed slowly. The salt stung at the sensitive lining of his nose and the eternally raw socket of his cybernetic eye.

Although he chose not to speak, it was harder not to listen. Especially when he was the subject of the conversation going on behind him. He’d never been any good at ignoring the voices that murmured their poisonous opinions, whether they were real voices or imaginary. 

Sadly the quartermaster was very real, and very poisonous.

“The work’s all done. We’ve two days until we make harbour,” the man in question had just said casually to the first mate. “If we shoved Láidir overboard now, no one would ever find the body, and we’d all get a bigger split of the cash.”

They were standing together in the lee of the forward mast—they must have seen him at the railing. As anonymous as he was these days, he was still as tall and broad as he’d been in his youth. 

Too many people assumed that his silence was a sign of deafness. They thought that they could say whatever they liked in his presence. 

In another life he’d have reached out with his mind and crushed the quartermaster’s throat like so much wet tissue paper. In another life the Force would have answered his call. 

Just like the crew of this ship, the Force no longer spoke to him.

Still staring at the mist and waves in front of the ship, he flexed his shoulders just so, shifting his neck so the joints cracked like blaster fire. He knew they’d hear that, even if they weren’t looking at him.

“I wouldn’t bother,” the first mate said. “You’d have more chance moving the core of Arkanis than getting one up on him. He’d have you overboard yourself before you even reached him.”

“And how would you know that? He’s a simpleton!” The quartermaster was getting angier. That was dangerous. There was nothing worse than the offended pride of an inadequate man. 

He should know—both he and Hux had been experts in prideful overreaction.

The first mate replied quietly, “What do you think happened to the last quartermaster?”

There was a pause in which the current quartermaster was probably weighing his chances. 

At the railing the man known to them only as ‘Láidir’ stretched his shoulders, raising his arms over his head in a way that he knew would highlight the muscles in his back. 

“I’m sick of the frelling smell of him,” the quartermaster grumbled, apparently backing down. “It’s bad enough having an Alpha onboard but I swear that one’s going into rut, you see if he isn’t.”

“You said it yourself—two days and we’ll all be on shore leave for a fortnight. He’ll be someone else’s problem then. Captain won’t let him back onboard if his head ain’t right by the end of it.”

“Not his head I’m worried about.”

The first mate laughed then, a sound that seemed to encompass a whole brothel's worth of filth. “Oh well, you’ve no worries there—I doubt you’re his type! I doubt you’d be anyone’s type without you paying them first! Look, I’ve sailed with Láidir for years and I’d swear he’s as sexless as the anchor. Two days. You don’t like the smell, you can go get ahead on cleaning.”

“Ain’t no such thing as a sexless Alpha.” The quartermaster replied distantly, the deck creaking as he stomped away.

“Now that’s just ignorant.”

The sound of the waves filled the world again. The ship creaked. 

When he looked over his shoulder there was no one behind him anymore. He hadn’t heard the first mate leave, but the man had always been lighter on his feet than most. That thought reminded him of things, and people, he didn’t want to think about any more. 

He breathed deep. He focused on the present. The past was a place he was determined to forget. The present was the time he had to live in, because he had no other choice.

He hadn’t chosen the name Láidir. He didn’t consider himself to have a name any more—he’d given up the only name he’d ever liked to hear spoken aloud when he became Supreme Leader, and now the only voice he wanted to hear it from was gone.

The captain of this ship had picked up ‘Láidir’ from his last employer, and used it in place of anything else. It almost certainly meant something offensive, but he didn’t care. A long time had passed since he last cared about anything. 

In the years since Exogol he’d drifted from one manual job to the next, collecting scars. 

The eye he’d lost in an asteroid mining accident. Three fingertips burned away on an ore refinery satellite out near Geonosis. He wore his long-hair braided back at one temple to highlight the pair of parallel scars he’d gained at the Kuat Entralla shipyards. 

All these things distracted from the details of his face, though two years on the cold seas of Arkanis had weathered him far past his thirty seven years. Probably no one who’d known Kylo Ren, or Ben Solo, would recognise him now. All that pain had been a blessing in disguise… a blessing in the form of a disguise.

As little as life held for him now, he refused to die by another’s hand.

Living was his punishment for all his mistakes, and without the Force his life was blessedly free of the influence of his uncle or anyone else. 

He wasn’t ready to face Luke yet.

Or his mother. 

The only person he wanted to see in the afterlife would have been just as angry and disappointed as them, but he knew Hux wouldn’t have been waiting for him on the other side. Hux had never had any connection to the Force. 

* * *

Unlike the tiny pearls his grandmother had loved to wear on Naboo, the pearls of Arkanis weren’t made in the shells of molluscs. They were formed in the tentacles of giant cephalopods that used the fist sized lumps of iridescent calcium as weapons. 

The best way to get at the pearls was to tear off a tentacle but leave the creature alive—it would eventually regenerate the limb, which meant it could provide more pearls in future. However, that method also made the creature enraged and murderous for quite a while afterwards. They were known to follow ships for miles to get revenge.

The first time he’d encountered one of those creatures it had broken his jaw in three places. Since then he’d seen more than a few smaller ships get shattered into rapidly sinking pieces with a single whip-like slap of a tentacle. 

Even unprocessed, the pearls were worth a small fortune, enough that pearl harvester crews would risk death to obtain them. 

People died for Arkanis pearls. 

But if an untouched pearl was worth a small fortune, the finished ones were worth ten or fifteen times that amount. Given the opportunity for wealth it would seem strange to the uninitiated, that almost no one wanted to be a pearlsmith. Until they found out that the job of processing pearls was even worse than harvesting.

Pearlsmithing was a long, slow, disgusting, and above all, solitary process.

To get the best price each pearl needed to go through a series of chemical baths, engraving, polishing, and the application of precious metal inlays—each task more complex than the last. 

It was said that powdered Arkanis pearl was one of the worst smells in the galaxy—a smell that was almost impossible to remove from human skin. At least the harvesters could stand on deck and let the sea wash them mostly clean of the pungent cephalopod stench.

As he helped the rest of the crew load their haul of pearls into transportation bags he wondered how the smell could possibly get any worse. There had to be a point where the human nose would just give up and turn off.

There was a human girl standing alone on the dock when the ship finally reached port. 

He’d always been a poor judge of age in children but this one looks maybe five or six—too young to be alone, though her serious, closed off expression says otherwise. She might have been five going on fifty. 

Her face reminded him of someone he’d spent the last few days trying not to remember, as did the leather band of a knife’s wrist-holster that was just visible under sleeves that were too short for her. She looked like a child whose parents couldn’t afford to replace clothes simply because she’d had the audacity to outgrown them.

Although he’d never been to this port before, it seemed that the captain at least knew the girl, because he was shouting at her before they’d even finished tying up the ship. 

“Tell the pearlsmith we have a good haul for him, so he’d better have the money to pay for it!”

She held up a small bag without a word. 

Who would trust a child of that age alone with so much money? Or expect them to carry seventy kilos of merchandise back? 

He’d have been surprised if the child weighed even seven kilos herself. 

As if to answer his unspoken question, the sacks of unprocessed pearls were unceremoniously shoved against his shoulder. Clearly she wouldn’t be doing any carrying.

“There you go, big ‘un, you can get these—and yourself—out of here,” the quartermaster said, giving the bags another shove. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the pearlsmith won’t mind your stench. Or maybe we’ll be the lucky ones and he’ll shove you in one of his acid baths.”

“Shut it,” The captain snapped before turning to their client with a fake smile. “Láidir here is going to carry the sacks for you, my girl. Don’t you bother paying him.”

With one final push towards the ramp, the captain added. “And you’d better be back in two weeks or we’ll set sail without you.”

The girl set off into the misty streets behind the dock with only a silent nod of her head to signal that he should follow her. 

She vanished almost instantly—the grey of her worn out clothing camouflaged against the salt crusted stone buildings. 

He tried to activate the infrared setting on his cybernetic eye by closing the lid three times in quick succession, but it just beeped at him. He really should get that system serviced while he was on shore leave. 

Part of his mind tried to reach for her presence with the Force. Old habits die hard.

“Come on,” a voice said quietly to his left. The familiar Inland Arkanis accent made his stomach tighten with well worn grief. Hux had only ever spoken that way when he was tired. It had been a relief to find that the ship’s crew spoke differently. 

The girl was waiting for him—one hand resting on a railing almost as tall as she was—with an expression of restrained impatience that was just as reminiscent of Hux as the accent had been. 

He needed to stop thinking about a man who’d been dead for seven years.

“Your legs are longer than mine,” she said, “you should be able to walk faster.”

He gave the sacks on his back a meaningful look, but she’d already started walking away from him again. Squaring his shoulders he followed as closely as he could.

The sooner he got rid of these pearls, the sooner he could find some lodging as far away from this child and all the uncomfortable memories she was dredging up.

* * *

The pearlsmith’s compound stood in the middle of the industrial district; it was unusual for an inhabited building to stand amongst the factories, but then few residential areas would allow a property to smell as terrible as this one did. 

Automated security turrets whirred loudly above the large armoured doors of the compound, the sound echoing weirdly in the mostly empty street. There were no other sentient beings in sight, just a few vehicles, but the security system seemed to be taking a long time to assess the situation.

Well, his job was done. There was no need for him to stand here waiting for a droid to decide he was safe. The pearlsmith could collect them without the threat of his presence. 

As he moved to drop the bags the girl turned to him with a look of confusion.

“You can’t leave them there!” She said. “You have to bring them inside!”

He nodded towards the turrets—every one of them was now aiming at his head. He didn’t need the Force to know that.

In reply she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. They’ll only shoot you if you do something wrong… like leaving me out here with all these heavy bags that I can’t carry.”

That was a threat he didn’t like, especially coming from a child. But with so many turrets, and weighed down as he was—there wasn’t much he could do but comply. 

The door rolled open silently then stopped with a shudder. The girl darted through the gap that was only just wide enough for him to squeeze through sideways, if he held the bags out awkwardly at his side.

“Here we are!” She called. He couldn’t see her in the darkness beyond the door. 

Feeling uneasy, with sweat beginning to bead on his skin again, he shuffled through.

Inside the compound smelled… sweet. Like tea with too much sugar in it, or the oddly chemical deserts the First Order had stocked their canteens with on Starkiller Base. 

The only unpleasant scent came from the bags in his hands.

Finally dropping the bags he took a deep breath, determined to take full advantage of an opportunity to smell something other than salt and cephalopods.

He smelled the frightened Omega a fraction of a second before the edge of a knife blade cut into his neck. The wound wasn’t deep, not yet, but the threat of a deeper slice was clear.

That’s why he’d been forced to squeeze through the door sideways—so whoever this was could get behind him. He should have looked. He should have just thrown the sacks through the gap and called it a day.

“It took you long enough to find us,” a man’s voice said behind him. The Inland accent was so strong that the image of Hux burned across his mind so clearly he could almost smell him.

Holding his hands up he tried to seem harmless long enough to work out a way to escape. His brain was slow to react, the hormonal distraction that had been bothering him for days threatening to peak at the worst possible time.

The Omega behind him was almost his height—he could feel the press of a chest against his back, but he could also feel that the Omega was wiry rather than muscular. He had the benefit of mass on his side. 

His eye whirred a little as he looked for potential weapons in the darkness.

“I always knew you weren’t really dead, Ren.”

All the other thoughts in his head screeched to a halt. Only one voice had ever said ‘Ren’ in those tones, and the owner of that voice had been dead for seven years.

He tried to turn his head, to see if the man behind him really was Armitage Hux, but all he saw was a fist. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which someone gets the wrong idea...

He woke slowly, as if his body was afraid that the familiar scents of cigarra smoke and long gone Omega would vanish with his return to consciousness. There had been no other dreams as he slept, at least none that he could remember.

His neck ached. At first he thought it was only the effect of sleeping at an odd angle, but as he regained more of his senses he realised the pain was from something wrapped around his throat and over a wound that he couldn’t recall receiving. 

This was not his hammock.

He was sitting upright, and whatever had been wrapped around his throat was also binding his wrists and upper arms as well. Ankles too, and thighs. Whoever had tied him to this chair hadn’t been sparing with the rope.

Where the hell was he now? He’d been sent on a pearl delivery with some strange child—then what had happened? 

Someone had jumped him with a knife. 

He’d thought it was Hux.

Hux was dead.

...but he could still smell that familiar scent under the cigarra smoke. 

There had been a time when the Force would have told him every detail of this room without him needing to open his eyes. Its absence now ached like a missing limb. 

Someone was breathing quietly, the slow steady breath of a person who was prepared to wait a million years for what they wanted. Hux had been a sniper once. He’d taken the training specifically to cultivate his patience. It hadn’t always worked, but that steady rhythm had filled the Supreme Leader’s chambers for so many years…

He couldn’t stall any longer. 

He had to see if it was really Hux. 

He slowly opened his good eye, keeping the lid shut over the cybernetic one in case the sound of the focusing mechanism disturbed the quiet of the room. 

There was no mistaking the man curled in the chair opposite, even beneath the long hair and oversized coat. 

Armitage Hux was staring off into the distance, a half-burnt cigarra balanced awkwardly between fingers that were also holding a vibro-blade. There was a blaster gripped firmly in the other hand, the aim straight despite its owner’s far off gaze. 

To the former General’s left a glass of murky water and ashed cigarra butts stood as testament to his chain smoking—unless Hux had changed his habits they’d been sitting here for at least five hours. 

It was strange to see that familiar profile so little changed after all these years. The light still glittered along Hux’s eyelashes when he blinked. His lips pursed around the cigarra just as soft and full as they had always been. Despite the grey beginning to frost his hair the fire hadn’t faded—

“I can feel you looking at me, Ren,” Hux said quietly, his words curling with the smoke he hadn’t fully exhaled, “It’s a sensation I thought I was well rid of.” 

Hux turned his head to meet his gaze, one eyebrow raised in preemptive derision of a reply that never came.

What could he possibly say to a man he’d believed to be dead for seven years? What could he ever say that might encompass the depths of his regret? Not just for their own relationship but for everything before and since?

He’d fled from the world to avoid such conversations.

Hearing the name ‘Ren’ made his heart flutter, an almost painfully alien sensation after all those years. He’d thought that organ had died along with Hux. 

Well, there was no point pretending to be asleep anymore. The ropes creaked a little as he shifted, the sound mostly hidden by the corroded whirring of his cybernetic eye.

The blaster twitched slightly in Hux’s hand, but his expression didn’t change. This wasn’t the cowed and broken man he’d last seen on the Steadfast all those years ago; this was a Hux he hadn’t really seen since Starkiller fell.

Even the scent of frightened Omega had faded to almost nothing.

“I always knew you weren’t really dead. Palpatine didn’t have the decency to die, so why should you?” Hux went on, flicking the half smoked cigarra towards the glass as if the news of Ren’s survival was so much trash. “Not that we get much news out here. No one really cares what happens in the rest of the galaxy, but I really had hoped that after all these years you’d have…”

Hux faded out, absently spinning the knife between his fingers. Finally he asked, “How did you find us?”

He tried to shrug, but the ropes limited the gesture to the slightest movement of his shoulders. The wound in his neck ached.

“Did you bribe someone?” Hux went on, frowning. “Torture them? Mina said you came straight off the ship with the pearls—have you ruined my supply chain? Granted, I don’t usually deal with that crew, but if you’ve spoiled my reputation amongst the pearl harvesters—”

He shook his head ‘no’, hard enough to have his hair swinging into his face, the pain in his neck making him hiss. He had no idea what Hux was talking about—he assumed Mina was the child who’d met his ship at the docks—but he didn’t know why Hux thought he would be hunting for him.

“Stop acting, Ren, I know that old scar on your throat doesn’t go deep enough to keep you from speaking, and I dressed that little slip-up with the knife,” Hux sneered. “Speak up.”

It was almost nostalgic to see the old familiar look of contempt back on Hux’s face, rather than the blank submission he’d worn towards the end of the war.

“You died,” the words came out rough, the volume wavering as he spoke aloud to another person for the first time in so long. He’d talked to himself sometimes on the ship, or in the rooms he took during his leave, but that had been mostly mumbling. It hadn’t mattered if anyone could understand him. 

Hux leaned forward, as if to study him more closely. His nostrils flared for a moment. It was hard to tell if Hux was disgusted by the smell of cephalopod or Alpha. 

At that thought the warmth that had been plaguing him for the last few weeks seemed to reignite in the pit of his stomach.

“Say that again.” Hux hissed, his eyes narrowed.

“Pryde...killed you.” The Allegiant General had reported the deed as if barely warranted any kind of notice, and at the time Kylo’s brain had been so muddled that it hadn’t really registered. Ben had been the one who finally understood what had happened, but there hadn’t been time for Hux’s death to matter. When he finally had all the time in the galaxy there had been nothing left that he could do.

Something about the way he spoke made Hux sit back, his face flickering between emotions too quickly for them to be identified. 

He finally settled on a sneer, recrossing his legs as he leaned back in his chair, the casual posture betrayed by the way his hand hesitated on its way to his mouth. 

He’d forgotten that he’d thrown the cigarra away.

“And you believed that?” Hux said at last. He reached without looking for the box sitting beside his glass. It was empty. “You really believed that an Alpha like Pryde would end his own bloodline, just like that? I always wondered about your brain but I had no idea you were actually that stupid.”

For a moment the curtain of dark anger that had proceeded so many of Kylo’s rages blurred his vision.  _ Pryde. Hux had slept with Pryde. Hux had left him for…  _ the fury dissipated as quickly as it had arisen. Hux hadn’t left him, he’d been the one who tore their relationship apart, it was all his fault. 

He tipped his head forward to stare at the floor, letting his hair at least half hide his face from Hux’s sneer. His neck burned where the bandage pressed against the cut. At least the pain was grounding. 

There was the softest click, as if a well oiled door had been softly opened.

“Not now, Mina,” Hux hissed, the scent of fear suddenly rising again. 

The voice that replied was definitely that of the girl who’d brought him here. “Kiln number three is making that noise again, papa, and you told me—”

Hux cut her off with a groan. “Fine. Go to your room. You stay here, I’ll be back.”

The last sentence must have been addressed to him, but there didn’t seem to be much point in replying. 

He was tied to a heavy metal chair after all—where could he go? He didn’t have the Force any more, and breaking his bonds was more effort than he had strength for right now. He kept on staring at the floor as Hux’s boots passed by.

Whatever problem was happening outside the room it seemed to involve a lot of steam being released and a quantity of swearing.

Inside the room it was quiet. 

Except for the slow breathing of someone else.

He looked up to find the girl, Mina, still standing by the door. She was holding it open like she had intended to walk through it but had become distracted. 

She was staring at him.

Under the artificial lights there was no doubt she was Hux’s child—she had his face shape, his lips, his nose, even his way of raising his eyebrows. Her hair and eyes were dark, but then those were dominant genes, weren’t they? She must have got those from Pryde. 

How had he never noticed? He’d thought that Hux had hated Pryde after he lost the Finalizer and became a General without a command. That hatred had seemed to be mutual, but then, hadn’t everyone assumed that he hated Hux too? And hadn’t  _ he _ spent half his nights in Hux’s bed?

That was not a thought he wanted to have right now. His impending rut blurred the lines but the idea of Pryde sleeping with Hux was disgusting. He was so old. He was unworthy.

Pryde had not been worthy of Hux.

Hux had been  _ his _ Omega.

The girl stepped back, her expression alarmed, and somehow… sad?

He looked away again, glaring at the floor.

Eventually the door clicked shut again.

The sound was half-muffled by a jealous Alpha’s growl that he hadn’t realised was coming from himself. 

* * *

How much time passed before Hux returned, he couldn’t say. 

His limbs and back ached from immobility, but he wasn’t sure he would have moved even if he could have—his soul hurt too much.

Seven years of drifting through the galaxy believing Hux was gone, only to find he was both alive and a traitor all at once? His heart had returned to life only to be shattered again.

And it was all his own fault. 

He’d put Pryde in Hux’s path.

He’d choked Hux, flung him around like Snoke had done, left him commandless and wretched. 

He was the one who walked into Palpatine’s trap. 

He had destroyed everything. 

He should have let himself die on Exegol.

“Ren?” Hux said, his voice oddly distorted by the pounding in his ears. “Ren, I can see you’re awake, answer me.”

He looked up to find Hux back in his own chair, a water bottle in one hand and an ice pack pressed to his temple with the other. Hux looked much smaller now that the oversized coat was gone in favour of a stained white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows to reveal scarred and skinny forearms. The scars were new but he recognised the cause—he’d seen the damage steam and chemicals could do to unguarded skin.

Part of him missed the former smoothness of his Omega but it was mostly drowned out by the roiling nausea. Even if that skin was changed there were still other parts of Hux that Pryde had touched.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Hux said. “I was half sure I’d come back to find you both gone.”

Raising an eyebrow he looked pointedly down at the cords binding his wrists and thighs. Then his brain caught up with Hux’s words.

“Both?”

Hux frowned at him. “She’s why you’re here, isn’t she? When I saw you with her at the gate I couldn’t believe you hadn’t just stolen her at the docks. Is this all just some elaborate punishment for what I did, or did you not recognise her scent over the stench of unprocessed pearls?”

Through his exhaustion, misery, and hormonal fog he couldn’t make any sense of what Hux was saying. For a second he even thought that Hux was talking about Rey before he realised he meant the child. 

“Why would I want her?”

The look Hux gave him then was so familiar it shook his grasp on reality. He hadn’t seen such disappointment and fury since… since he’d told Hux exactly why Starkiller fell.

“More fool me for thinking that seeing your daughter for the first time would matter to you,” Hux muttered so quietly the words could have been a figment of his imagination. 

His skin felt cold and hot all at once, his heart juddering in his chest like it was about to fail. Perhaps he was still in that snowbank and everything that had happened since was just an hallucination.

“But, Pryde…”

“Was my  _ father _ , Ren. I thought you knew that? I thought that was why you forced me to work with him on the Steadfast—yet another punishment for my failures!” Hux had lent forward as he said this, the ice pack flung onto the floor where it had split open across the toes of Ren’s boots. “You can read minds, how could you not know that when you were always in my head?”

“I wasn’t.” Taking information from another person’s mind was not that simple. From their relationship he’d felt Hux’s moods more than actual thought. When things had finally soured between them so far that all he felt was fear, he’d stopped looking entirely. If Hux hadn’t been deliberately broadcasting something he hadn’t seen it at all. 

“I cannot believe you,” Hux spat. He slammed back into his chair. “Fuck you, Ren.”

“I don’t understand.” This entire conversation was like being drunk. Nothing made sense anymore.

With his arms crossed over this chest and the cigarra packet crumpled in his hand, Hux looked like a child throwing a tantrum. There were even tears threatening to spill over his lashes.

“Please, tell me.” When had he last said please to Hux?

The gesture didn’t seem too impressive.

“Why don’t you just look?” Hux snapped. He tapped the side of his head and winced. There was a fresh bruise spreading across his face where the ice pack had been. The angles were sharp like something mechanical had hit him. “I won’t even fight you.”

“I can’t.” 

Hux stared at him for a long moment. His pale eyes narrowed.

“You really can’t, can you, Ren?”

Ren shook his head. Every time he heard Hux say that name he felt more like a person.

Something in Hux’s face changed then, a guardedness slipping free for the first time in what must have been years. Ren had seen this from him before, usually in their bed. Hux kept everything tightly locked inside until he simply had to speak, or rather monologue until his mind was empty again.

Picking up for the vibro-blade he’d left by the chair, Hux focused on turning the handle through his fingers as he spoke. “Enric hated me from the moment he knew I existed. I was a mistake—a foolish Omega goes into heat during a mission with an Alpha he can’t really stand. Brendol at least had it better than I did. He was as tall as I am, but his girth made it easier to hide me. Even if I hadn’t been premature I think no one would have ever caught on. They all thought he was a Beta. Even Maratelle believed his ‘kitchen girl’ lie. I wasn’t as fortunate during my pregnancy, within a month of Exegol I was already looking like a snake that had swallowed a BB droid whole.”

The Alpha in him wanted to imagine Hux like that, but it was overruled. Concentration was needed right now.

“He shot you,” he prompted, to bring Hux back to the topic of Pryde.

“If you’d ever really cared about the First Order, Ren, you’d have known you can’t kill someone with a blaster on the bridge. There’d have been no officers left within a week of Palpatine’s first death if it weren’t regulation to keep the charge low. If you wanted to assassinate someone you had to do it somewhere private.” The blade in his fingers flashed out towards Ren for an instant. An empty threat. “He smelled what you’d done to me, and he knew I couldn’t be trusted anymore. I woke up in a preprogrammed escape pod with the several broken ribs, an obscene amount of cash, and no fucking food. There was no plan, just one chance at survival.”

Pryde had never told him any of that. The Alligent General had never said what had done with Hux’s body and he hadn’t thought to ask. 

The story still made no sense. Pryde had been loyal to Palpatine, far more loyal than anyone had ever been to Snoke. Wouldn’t Palpatine have wanted Kylo’s child? Another Skywalker to manipulate?

“Why?” 

Hux shrugged. “Lineage. He hated me but his legitimate children were already dead—she would have been his only grandchild. Some Alphas are very family motivated, Ren, not that you would know anything about that. How could you not know I was carrying your child? It was early, but _ you  _ were my Alpha. I thought that’s why I lost you in the end. I thought that was why you made that damn mask again.”

That was probably why he hadn’t noticed. The air filters. And he’d been so preoccupied, so focused on getting to Palpatine. 

“When I knew where you were going… I knew I had to stop you.” Hux said, as if he was the one reading minds. “I couldn’t let you give her to him. I couldn’t let you throw away everything the First Order had been. You hadn’t fought your way through the ranks, you didn’t understand what  _ we _ were trying to do. I couldn’t let you win.”

What could he say to that? He’d always known Hux was more dedicated to the Order than most, even if it had all been nothing but a ridiculous complex lie. None of that mattered any more.

“You won.”

Hux laughed, so sharp and sudden that even he winced at the noise. “I won? You call this winning? Hiding on this miserable planet? Hoping the rain and chemical stench will be enough to keep my daughter and I safe? Do you have any idea what it’s like outside the Order for unmated Omegas like me? There was no winning for me, Ren. You made sure of that.”

He stared at Hux. The only sound in the room now that Hux had finally run out of steam was the whirring of his eye as it focused and re-focused. The mechanism was horribly loud in the silence. 

He was tired. He hadn’t been this exhausted since the Jawas hauled him off Exegol. Words didn’t mean anything. Life didn’t mean anything.

He wanted to sleep.

He knew he should care about all this information—about the child he’d never imagined having—but his brain absolutely refused to focus.

There was only one thing he’d ever wanted to say to Hux since Exegol. So he said it.

“I’m sorry.”

Hux blinked.

A bell chimed in another room, the sound half muffled by the walls. 

“I need to get back to work,” Hux said, breaking eye contact as he stood awkwardly from his chair. “You can sleep in here, or in one the storage lofts.”

In a way, that offer was far more startling than any other revelation he’d heard in the last few hours. He didn’t know what to make of it.

Hux yawned and walked towards the door without bothering to look at him. Had he forgotten that he was still tied to the chair?

“You won’t have access to the rest of the compound until I say so.” Hux went on. “If you want to leave, you can leave. But if you ever come back I’ll kill you on sight. ”

“And if I stay?”

“Perhaps we can talk again. Eventually.”

As Hux moved through the door he stepped over a droid rolling in. It had probably been green and blue once, but Arkanis damp and pearlsmith chemicals had burned the paintwork a rusty orange much like its owner's hair. It was waving a very small knife.

“Where would you like to sleep?” The droid asked while it began to slice through the cord fastening Ren’s leg to the chair. 

Its voice almost drowned out the sound of the door locking behind Hux. 

“I don’t care.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on Twitter @hux_gen for some exciting writing news and very sporadic tweeting.


	3. Chapter 3

The storage loft was surprisingly comfortable after so much time at sea. Why Hux needed so much straw he couldn’t guess, but it made for a warm bed that was blessedly free of the smell of cephalopod and pearls. There was still the smell of chemicals but that was mostly lost under the scent of pre-Rut Alpha. 

Staring up at the dim shapes of the joists above him, he tried and failed to be grateful for his biology. It was a battle to even think through the warm fog rising through his core.

He was an Alpha. There was an Omega nearby, one he knew, one he’d had feelings for all those years ago. The urge to chase Hux down was so much harder to resist than the urge to find a nameless prostitute.

Hux was here.

His Hux.

His Mate.

The bearer of his child.

That thought succeeded in quelling his rut where the others had failed.

_ He _ was a father. 

There had been many things Ben Solo and Kylo Ren had never imagined they could be—a good man, a calm leader, a devoted husband—but the idea of being a father had never even crossed their minds. 

Ben had expected to be celibate like his uncle, and Kylo had hated his own father’s failures so deeply that the idea of finding himself in the same role as Han was unimaginable. 

Now here he was, laying in the dark, suddenly a father of a seven-year-old child who’d been hidden from him when he’d never even suspected that she existed. 

How much had Hux hated him in the end that he’d run so far to keep their child safe?

Every crime Kylo had ever committed against Hux played across his mind like a holo of misery. The Force no longer spoke to him but he could fill the texture of Hux’s throat as he choked him while the Supremacy burned around them. He could hear the crack of bones when he’d thrown him against consoles. He could still taste blood from plush split lips when Hux still came to his quarters in spite of everything he’d done.

He hadn’t expected sleep to come for him, but he knew he was dreaming again when he found himself standing in at the door to quarters he hadn’t thought about since Rey destroyed them.

He wore a familiar pair of gloves on hands that still had ten intact fingers, and his eyesight was purely biological—no mechanical eye to augment his vision but no helmet either. He hadn’t reforged it yet.

A cloud of Omega scent, warm and dizzyingly sweet, filled his nostrils as the door slid back into its frame. He knew that scent well, but he hadn’t been expecting it. He and Hux had fought viciously for weeks after the Finalizer was lost, to the point that they barely acknowledged one another outside of meetings. Hux had been a rigidly formal statue in Kylo’s presence, all prim and proper courtesy, and minimal eye contact.

Now he was standing naked in Kylo’s reception room with his back turned to the door. The inside of his thighs glittered with slick.

Kylo locked the door behind himself, but Hux didn’t react. He stayed at parade rest, his hands clasped so firmly behind his back that his nails were cutting into his own palms.

“General Hux, I didn’t expect to find you here,” Kylo said. The breath it took for such a short sentence already had him dizzy with lust, blood rushing south in a show of Alpha biology, and poor judgement. 

When Hux turned his head to meet his gaze there was no warmth in his eyes, only a dull sort of resignation.

The part of him that knew this was a dream memory missed the fire that had been in his gaze when they first met. The part of him that had existed at that time felt only the intoxifying effect of his scent. 

“I assumed you’d still rather I come to you than find a service Alpha on deck eight,” Hux said, his nose held high like there was any dignity left in him. “It’s not as if I have anything else to do these days than please the Supreme Leader.”

As Kylo stepped forward he wanted to apologise, to beg for forgiveness, to do anything but silently scent Hux’s neck, but it seemed he had no control over his actions here. He was just an observer. 

“You want to please me? That must be a first,” Kylo replied, one gloved hand drifting lightly over Hux’s flaccid cock while the other gripped a thin upper arm.

For a moment there was a flash of a sneer on Hux’s face before the blankness returned. “I’m sorry, was it someone else who used to spill inside me five times in a single night, Supreme Leader, or was it you?”

“That was for mutual pleasure.”

“How do you know this isn’t?” Hux snapped, leaning close so Kylo could see just how wide his irises were blown.

The trembling in Hux’s frame didn’t ease at the tightening of Kylo’s fist around Hux’s cock, which finally jumped a little against his palm. 

“Perhaps I’ve just been waiting too long for you to get here,” Hux muttered defensively. “I sent you a message five hours ago, but you never respond to my comms anymore.”

Kylo hadn’t received a comm from Hux, or if he had it had been so lost in all the details of the war and his search for the holocron that its origin hadn’t even registered in his mind.

The Kylo of those days would never admit such a failing though. 

“I had better things to do than read your messages, General,” he said, and the version of himself laying in a straw-filled attic regretted every syllable. “But I have time to do you now.”

Hux heaved an exasperated sigh, but his heat was clearly overriding all his common sense and dignity. Rather than arguing further, Hux turned his attention to the fastenings on Kylo’s clothing.

“I thought you'd chosen to suppress your heats,” Kylo said in mock conversational tones while Hux worked his way down the hooks of his tunic towards his already tented leggings. 

“The loss of the Finalizer disrupted my doses,” Hux replied without meeting his eye, though his hands drifted hungrily over Kylo’s chest as he pushed both tunic and cloak from Kylo’s shoulders.

Kylo had removed his hands from Hux’s body for a moment to allow the removal of his clothes, but he returned them to their former places before the fabric even hit the ground. 

In the interval Hux’s cock had filled out considerably, seemingly driven by the contact with Kylo’s own form. 

Whether Kylo had cared beyond his own ego at that point he couldn’t remember, but in the here and now he had to wonder if Hux had planned something else during that visit. He’d gone to great lengths to stop Kylo from winning. Assassination had always been his style. 

How long had Hux been in Kylo’s quarters before he found him? Based on the strength of his scent it could have been hours.

While in the memory dream Kylo was pushing Hux down onto the bed his present consciousness was trying to look for hidden weapons, or any other sign that Hux had planned to end him. 

It was no good though, he couldn’t concentrate. He’d been on the cusp of a rut for days and his memory was showing him the last time he’d fucked Hux, which was probably also the moment they’d conceived their child.

By the time he was on the bed Hux had given up on undressing Kylo and had settled for tugging his leggings down just far enough to free his cock. Kylo hadn’t cared, he was Supreme Leader, ruined clothes could easily be replaced, and the fact that he was clothed while Hux was naked went straight to his knot.

The first coupling of that heat had reached its climax with a speed that would have been embarrassing if Hux hadn’t been cold with slick to the knees and coming the instant Kylo bottomed out. To his own smug satisfaction, Kylo had lasted a few more thrusts before his knot tied them too firmly together to move. 

Although they spent the next three days in bed before Hux’s heat finally broke they hadn’t said much beyond the usual muttered praise. In the dream, those days flew by in one long single orgasm that had him writhing alone in his bed of hay while the memory of Hux rode him with his eyes tightly closed.

If he’d known it would be their last time together… well the man he’d been then wouldn’t have cared. And if he’d known about the pregnancy, the war would have gone very differently indeed.

* * *

He woke to the cold discomfort of dried fluids gluing his leggings and a not inconsiderable amount of grass to his thighs and stomach. 

When had he last had a wet dream like that? Not since he’d joined the Knights of Ren and Ren himself had complained about the disruption of his Force projections. 

The pressure of his rut remained at the back of his mind like a tidal wave that refused to break. It did nothing to help his mood.

There was no water in the loft beyond the small bottle the strange little droid had left him with, and he had no spare clothes. The only options were the blankets he’d been sleeping on, or nudity. They were very small blankets, but still more dignified than the alternatives.

Hux glanced in his direction for a moment when he finally emerged into the grey light that passed for day on Arkanis.

“A brave choice to wear so little when I’ve so many different acids here.” Hux said, scanning his blanket-wrapped form from the corner of his eye. 

Ignoring the teasing he crossed to what looked like a cistern for reclaiming rainwater from the roof.

“And that would be going beyond brave and into foolish.” Hux stopped him with a hand on his chest before he could raise the lid. As brief as it was, that first pleasant contact from another human burned across his skin and brought with it the shame of last night’s dream.

All he could do in response was swallow and look to Hux for an explanation.

Hux pulled a chain nearby. The instant the lid had risen even an inch, something yellow and covered in spines whipped out of the gap towards them. Whatever it was retreated with a squeak when the lid dropped closed again.

“I keep them in brackish water to make them docile,” Hux said as he moved towards a small shed and signalled for him to follow. “But ‘docile’ is a relative term, they’ll still rip your face off given the chance. Though I see something already tried to get yours already. Exegol?”

The cheerfulness in Hux’s tone was more disorientating than the anger of the day before—hadn’t Hux promised to kill him on sight if he left? Now he was discussing the end of the war like a civilian might talk about the weather. 

Noticing his frown, Hux pursed his lips and turned his face away.

The bruising from the kiln accident had spread until nearly a quarter of his face was purple and blue. Perhaps the blow to the head was to blame for his change in mood.

He wasn’t thinking. He reached out to touch the injury.

Hux stepped back like he’d been burnt, his hand flexing in that telltale way it always did just before he freed his knife.

“Don’t.”

“Sorry.” His voice sounded awful even to his own ears.

“There’s a shower in there.” Hux said, pointing towards the hut and resolutely not looking in his direction. “And soap, if you remember what that is. I’ll have D7 bring you some clothes. You can wash yours in there, or I can burn them for the sake of decency.”

Hux was gone before he could reply.

* * *

The water was cold enough to bring his pre-rut fever under control, and the soap was so harsh his skin insisted it had been flayed. He hadn’t felt this clean since he’d been Supreme Leader.

He could have happily stayed in that shower for hours. 

Sadly, his leisurely soak was interrupted by the reappearance of the knife-wielding droid. It still held the knife, but a grey shirt and leggings had been draped over that arm. There were no underclothes. 

Based on the length of the legs these clothes had clearly belonged to Hux once, possibly during his pregnancy. The fabric had that stiff musty quality of being put away for years, and there was far more space around the waist area than was necessary in Hux’s current shape. They didn’t smell of anyone else. 

Hux was back to poking around at the machinery when he stepped outside the shed with his own now-clean clothes dripping in his hands. He’d intended to hang them somewhere to dry, but there was neither sun nor breeze inside the compound.

“D7, take those to the dryer, put them in  _ and _ turn it on this time,” Hux said after the briefest glance in their direction. As the droid rolled away with a chirp, he went on without looking up, “What should I call you these days? I’m just the pearlsmith here, which is conveniently anonymous, but you can call me Armitage if you have to.”

His shoulders raised in a shrug just as his eyebrows raised in surprise. Hux had never let anyone call him by his first name.

Hux turned to frown at him. “You must have a name.”

“Láidir,” he replied with another shrug.

The laugh Hux barked out seemed to startle them both. 

“You named yourself ‘strong’?”

He shook his head. He should have known it was descriptive. “A captain chose it.”

“Well, as accurate as it might be, I won’t be calling you that.” Hux stared off into the distance for a moment. “I’ll call you Caill.”

“Meaning?”

This time it was Hux that shrugged. “It’s just one letter different to your old name—from Kylo to Kyl.”

He knew Hux’s mind too well to accept that explanation, but he also recognised the look in Hux’s eye that said he was enjoying whatever this private torture was and that was something he’d long since learned not to give into. If Hux wanted to call him Kyl, then Kyl he would be. 

“Fine.”

“You really don’t talk much, do you?”

The perverse part of his mind that had always enjoyed watching Hux bristle kept his mouth resolutely shut.

Before Hux had the chance to get properly annoyed at him, a door opened on part of the compound he hadn’t ventured into before, releasing the surprisingly pleasant smell of baking pastries. 

“Papa? Breakfast!” Mina called without appearing at the door.

This time the moment of Hux weighing his options seemed almost cursory, then he was waving for Kyl to follow him. All the fear of last night seemed to have left him entirely. 

It was a strange thought to realise that no one had faced him without fear since Exegol, and very rarely before that. Hux had far less reason to trust him than most, and yet…

Hux still ate like a bird, tearing tiny scraps off the jam tart in front of him and somehow transporting them to his mouth without the action being noticed. As she sat beside him Mina managed to shove a spiced roll into her mouth whole. 

‘She takes after me,’ Kyl thought, and found himself smiling fondly before the shock of realising what had just crossed his mind knocked the breath out of him. 

This was his daughter. 

There was no question to it, he could smell it on her now that he was concentrating. Which in itself was odd—wasn’t pearlsmithing a notoriously disgusting job? The yard had smelled bad, as had the perimeter of the compound, but the loft where he’d slept had been tolerable, and in here the air was pleasant enough. 

Her clothes were different, better fitting, and while not brightly coloured they didn’t seem nearly as drab as the things she’d worn yesterday.

“He’s wondering why it doesn’t smell bad in here,” Mina whispered to Hux and got a wide-eyed look of admonishment in return. 

“I told you not to do that in public!”

“This isn’t ‘public’, this is our house.” She said in that smug way of all young children correcting adults on basic facts. “He’s not thinking anything bad.  _ And _ he even smells safe now he’s had a wash.”

Hux covered his face with his hands and groaned. “I knew this was a bad idea. Take your breakfast to your room, lock the door.”

Mina looked between them. “But papa…”

“Do as I say.”

While she gathered her things, Kyl ate the pastry that had been placed in front of him with slow deliberate bites in the hope of looking as non-threatening as possible.

It was several minutes after a door locked loudly somewhere deeper in the compound that Hux finally looked up again.

“She has the Force?”

“Yes, and you’ll do well to never say anything out loud about that fact again.”

He nodded and took another bite of his pastry. That was reasonable. The Force had caused enough problems for the galaxy.

“That’s it? You’re just going to agree with me?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Hux asked, suddenly leaning forward to peer at him. “Did you hit your head?”

“Many times.” Kyl couldn’t help but smirk a little as he tapped the scars running into his hairline. 

Hux growled with irritation, and something hidden Alpha part of his brain felt guilty. 

“You’re not the man I knew. What happened to you on Exegol?” 

“I died. Or close enough.”

“And that changed you so much you’ll actually agree with me without a fight?”

“No, losing you did that.”

They stared at each other, as if daring one enough to blink, for far longer than was comfortable. It was Hux who looked away first, and crossed to the kettle with a sigh.

“Do you want tarine tea?” He asked, only reaching for one mug. Kyl shook his head to confirm what Hux already knew. He’d never drunk that stuff. He might have changed as a person but he still had the same tastebuds.

“Why doesn’t it smell?” Kyl asked instead.

“If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else on the pearl harvesters, or—”

“You’ll kill me?”

“Exactly.”

“You can only kill me once.”

“That’s what everyone thought about Palpatine,” Hux laughed. He returned to the seat opposite Kyl with his tea clasped between his hands. “Pearlsmithing is a messy business. And it’s almost exclusively done by Omegas. Everyone knows it's an undesirable job that smells terrible—what better way to hide from Alphas and anyone else who judges unmated Omegas? No one can you’re in heat if you smell like a chemical factory. I won’t lie, the inner workshop does smell awful, and it vents into the street so no one wants to come here. But I have specific outfits for working in there, and I also wear those on the rare occasion I leave the compound.”

“Mina’s rags too?” It was the first time he’d said his daughter’s name out loud. The syllables felt heavy on his tongue.

Hux nodded. His shoulders seemed to be relaxing again, though whether that was an effect of the tea or Kyl’s own calm he couldn’t tell.

“You seem happier today.” He wasn’t sure why he said that. It felt necessary. He wanted to ask why Hux had let him stay, or why they were talking like old acquaintances, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answers.

“The pearls you brought me were good. You haven’t killed us in our sleep or kidnapped my child. I don’t trust you, but…” Hux sipped his tea and looked away. “She was right that you smell safe. You know, when someone carries a child, a little of that child’s DNA gets into their parent’s bloodstream. I can’t say I have the Force, and perhaps it's just the bred-but-unmated Omega in me, but I know you’re different than you were.”

There was no more food on his plate to focus on. 

“Does she know?” He asked, unable to bring himself to comment on Hux’s reassessment of his character.

“That you’re her father?” Hux spread his free hand in a gesture of uncertainty. “Probably, I don’t always know what she knows. I don’t know that your first day back in her life is the time to tell her though.”

He didn’t like the word ‘back’ in that sentence but he also didn’t want to argue any more about whether he’d known Hux was pregnant, so he just nodded.

“When does your ship need you back?”

“Thirteen days.”

“Perhaps if you do some work for me here, and my good mood continues, you can get to know your daughter properly. The loft was comfortable enough?”

The unexpected offer was welcome, but there was a problem. 

“I’m heading for a rut.” He said, feeling as if he’d admitted to having a bomb strapped to his chest. 

Hux gave him an unreadable look. “I haven’t lost my sense of smell.” He stood and placed the tea mug into the sink. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a lot of heavy lifting for you to do outside while the daylight lasts.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hux had not been lying about the heavy lifting—if Kyl hadn’t known better he would have suspected that Hux had spitefully saved up all the most awkward things just to make him suffer. 

He spent hours moving objects from one side of the yard to the other, without much rhyme or reason, but it was a relief to keep busy. Hux had stood by for the first twenty minutes, watching him with an unreadable expression and the sweet scent of an Omega at peace before he vanished indoors to some other task. As soon as the air was clear Kyl’s mind cleared with it.

Lift the object. 

Cross the space.

Lower the object.

He was a machine without thought, not a fool regretting the choices of almost a decade ago or an Alpha tempted to rut with an Omega that was sending him mixed signals. 

There were no problems in his corner of the galaxy when he was working.

Until he stumbled and almost fell.

“You should eat,” Mina said. Despite the rumble of machinery her voice carried surprisingly clearly across the yard. Kyl wondered if she was enhancing the sound somehow—Leia had instinctively done that for most of her life, long before she knew she had the Force herself.

“Papa asked me to give you this,” she raised a small tray in her hands. “He’s eating at his desk again. He says you can’t come inside, I don’t know why.”

Kyl nodded, but stayed where he’d been working. One of the security turrets had whirred a few moments before she opened the door. Given how Hux had told her more than once to lock herself away in her room, he didn’t entirely trust that this wasn’t some kind of test.

The fact that she didn’t move any closer seemed to confirm that suspicion.

“Okay, well it’s poultry stew,” she added quietly, pointing to a bowl, “I figured you might be tired of fish.”

Something made a soft dry sound as the tray was placed carefully on a workbench not far from the kitchen door. It looked like there was protein bread too. That would be a nice change from shipboard rations.

“Thank you,” he said when she turned towards the door. It felt strange to speak to her face-to-face, like looking at her eyes brought the words ‘you’re my daughter’ to the tip of his tongue. Safer to speak when she wasn’t looking, and might not be able to hear him anyway.

She waved before the door closed, though whether that was an acknowledgement or simply politeness he couldn’t tell.

An oval of yellow light grew across the stones of the yard. 

For a moment he thought the sun might be breaking through the clouds—a rare but not impossible occurrence on Arkanis—before he realised window shutters were opening along the kitchen wall.

Mina was sitting at the table they’d shared the night before, but now there were datapads and school tools strewn across the surface. Of course Hux would be educating her at home, where else would be safe for her?

Perched on the edge of the workbench, Kyl ate his bread and stew while he watched her work. He wondered if she could pick up from his thoughts how much he appreciated the chance to see her at ease like this, and if so whether she understood who they were to one another.

Unsurprisingly, maths and problem solving came easily to her—she was Hux’s daughter after all—but when she reached for a pencil to begin her writing practice Kyl had a moment of nostalgia so overwhelming he almost had to sit on the floor.

He’d written like that once, when he was a child. His fingers had refused to do what they were supposed to, the pen was a torture device, and the Aurebesh alphabet was a cruel joke aimed squarely at him. How many pens had he snapped, or flung at droids? How many times had Leia found him sulking under his bed with his torn up homework scattered around him like snow?

Leia had tried to help him, but she’d just encouraged him to practice more. Han had told him that no one needed to write by hand. Luke had suggested patience. 

Ben had hated all of them. 

It had been one of the household droids that had fashioned him a solution. A little plasteel lump that slotted around the pencil and forced his fingers into the correct positions. That droid had done more to help him in those five minutes than his family in all the weeks before that. He couldn’t even remember its name anymore.

Meal finished, Kyl returned to his task, but for once he didn’t let his mind go blank.

Instead he tried to picture the thing that droid had made him in as much detail as possible. He’d taught himself to whittle years ago as both a distraction during quiet times on the ship and a way to strengthen his remaining fingers, so he was pretty sure he could make one himself.

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting you to work so quickly,” Hux said. 

Kyl wondered how long Hux had been watching him. As he blinked and looked up at the darker sky he wondered how long he’d been daydreaming about handicrafts.

“It’s about 4pm,” Hux offered as if he had his daughter’s ability to read minds. “I tend to take a break now for a few hours before dinner. You’re welcome to join us.”

Running the back of his hand across his forehead, Kyl was suddenly aware of how hot and sweaty the work had made him. Or was that just his body reacting to the scent of Hux nearby again?

“Do you have scrap wood?” Kyl asked. 

Hux blinked at the non sequitur. “For dinner?”

Instead of responding Kyl’s brain seemed to shut down for several long seconds of embarrassed silence.

“Yes, in there,” Hux said. He waved towards a large metal crate with an exasperated sigh. It was full of small chunks of various woods, some of them rare enough to be valuable if they’d been large enough to make anything. “Take your pick.”

By the time Kyl had found what he was looking for—and pocketed a few other pieces that spoke to him of becoming something useful—Hux had gone inside to sit at the table with Mina. 

They were laughing as they looked over her work together.

Kyl didn’t want to intrude. 

So he didn’t.

His pocket knives were still in the loft where he’d left them that morning with his outerwear. He was a little surprised that Hux had let him keep them after all his displays of distrust, but perhaps as an artist himself now he recognised them for what they were.

The light wasn’t great up there, but his prosthetic eye could manage well enough even if it whirred and stuttered to the contrary. 

Despite the thick calluses he’d developed over the last few years it wasn’t surprising that he cut himself once or twice—the pencil grip was tiny compared to his own fingers. Everything about her was small. He couldn’t even imagine how delicate she would have been when she was born.

He’d missed so much because he’d never known.

“Are you going to eat?” Hux called up the ladder.

The loft was entirely dark now.

How long had he been sitting there staring at his own hands?

At least his project was finished.

Hux jumped back with a yelp when Kyl instinctively slid down the ladder rather than climbing down one rung at a time. Han had taught him that in the Falcon—as a quicker way to get around in an emergency and a way to irritate Leia—but it had been useful for most of his life. Judging by Hux’s glare it wasn’t an appropriate way for the former Supreme Leader to get around.

“You could have responded verbally, you know!” Hux snapped.

Kyl shrugged. Speech didn’t feel all that available to him right now.

The noise Hux made in response felt like liquid contempt, but that was as far as he went in making his feelings known. There had been a time—before Starkiller—when Hux would not have been so restrained, and a time after it when he would have been entirely silent. Was this middle ground better? 

Had time and parenthood changed Hux, or was he deliberately mellowing his edges?

Or was Kyl reading too much into everything, and this was all just common decency?

Without the Force it was hard to know what Hux was thinking as he gestured for Kyl to go ahead through the yard to the kitchen. He’d spent so much of their relationship scanning the surface of Hux’s emotions that now he felt like they were walking in separate rooms, with soundproof walls between them.

He hadn’t felt the loss of his powers so keenly in years. 

At the kitchen table, Mina’s work had been pushed aside for a meal made up of a dozen smaller dishes that were intended to be combined and eaten on some kind of bread. He’d eaten meals of similar design in his childhood, but he didn’t recognise any of these specific foods. 

Before he could even get comfortable at the table, his stomach growled with the odd pre-rut mix of hunger and empty nausea, a noise so loud in the quiet room that Hux looked up and Mina giggled.

“I can help,” she said with a grin when he still didn’t reach for any plates. “Sounds like you’re too hungry to function.”

Hux watched her with his eyebrows raised as she made up a plate and slid it across to Kyl. 

Nodding gratefully, Kyl picked up one of the pencils that sat her work, slotted it into the grip he’d made and slid it back along the same path. Something about the exchange felt important. 

She turned the pencil in her hands with a frown. “Umm... thanks?” 

He mimed turning it over and writing with it.

For the first few letters the frown deepened then shifted to a look of intense concentration, as only a child can concentrate—tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth and all.

“Oh, that’s already much better,” Hux said quietly, reaching for the food without really taking his eyes off his daughter’s writing. “How did you know to do that?”

Kyl flexed his own fingers in answer.

“Well, thank you anyway.” Hux finally muttered when Kyl turned his focus back to the food.

It was delicious, and much more highly spiced than he would have expected from a former child of the fleet like Hux. Did it taste better because the flavours were mixing with the sweet smell of the man across the table? Or because Mina laughed and joked throughout the meal, leading Hux into similar displays of contentment? Perhaps. 

Did it really matter why? 

What if he just let himself enjoy this?

* * *

After the meal, another layer of domesticity was added when Mina retrieved a dejarik board from another room. 

Kyl had never played it with Hux—and judging by the newness of the board Hux hadn’t owned it while he was in the First Order—but the game had been a major part of Ben’s relationship with his adopted uncle. As the figures flickered into life he could almost hear the Wookie’s roar of irritation at Ben’s mind reading habits.

The grin on Mina’s face told him that she used very similar tactics. 

Hux gave Kyl a look that was possibly intended to be apologetic. It didn’t suit him. 

“Darling,” he said quietly to Mina, “that’s a two player game.”

“And I’m a  _ child _ ,” she replied, “So to make it fair, we should team up to beat him.”

Who were they to argue with such logic? 

Not that Kyl thought she needed the help to beat him—he felt half asleep and felt like his brain was turning into steam from sitting in this enclosed room with Hux for so long. He should probably retire for the night, but he felt compelled to keep her happy.

Reaching out to the board Kyl tapped his first piece, the Mantellian Savrips, and gestured for the two of them to select their own.

Was this what a family life should feel like? 

He’d never felt like this with Han and Leia.

Or was he just delirious?

The first piece chosen by his opponents was the Grimtaash. Hux seemed oblivious, and Kyl tried to keep his face emotionless, but Mina still looked up in surprise at the wave of regret that washed over him. He’d never been good at controlling his emotions.

That had been the name of his ship once, and the legend that was supposed to keep Leia’s adoptive people safe from harm; but Alderaan was gone, Leia was gone, and he’d fled from his crimes at the temple in that ship. 

It wasn’t a good omen for him.

Mina touched something on the board, and the Grimtaash vanished. An orange lothcat took its place.

“Games change,” she said, “Papa always told me if they don’t change on their own you can always make the changes for them.”

Kyl nodded. “Wise.”

* * *

After the game—in which Kyl had found himself thoroughly defeated—Hux had served them both a bowl of traditional Arkanian pudding. It was the kind of heavy, sticky, carb-dense food that felt like it had a gravity all its own. 

Hux himself had wandered away to deal with something chemical in another room. He might have changed somewhat over the years, but he had never had the stomach for foods like that. 

Kyl wasn’t sure he had the stomach for it either. 

Leaving didn’t seem right just yet though.

Mina had stayed in her seat opposite him, picking fitfully at the dessert and doodling in a workbook with the pencil grip he had made for her. 

They sat quietly for a few minutes while she drew rows of neat circles with her free hand. It was a writing practice that he’d always found calming. Her handwriting had noticeably improved already.

The unfamiliar pride filling his heart was a welcome distraction from his nausea.

Perhaps he should make a new calligraphy set. Or buy one. He’d be able to afford it once he was back on the ship.

The thought of being on the sea again turned his bones cold.

“Papa says you’re my father,” Mina said suddenly around a mouthful of sauce.

He nodded, trying to keep the surprise off his face. After their conversation that morning he hadn’t expected Hux to tell her yet.

“He wasn’t going to tell me, but I asked.”

In a way it was a relief not to vocalise his feelings on the matter. His thoughts were too jumbled for words. He didn’t want to hurt her by saying the wrong thing.

“That’s nice,” she said thoughtfully, half to herself. “I didn’t think I had a father. Though I guess I had to come from somewhere. I'm not sure I even know what to do with a father.”

“I don’t know either.”

Mina snorted and rolled her eyes. It was a startlingly Hux-like expression for a girl of her age. “Papa said the same thing when I asked him.”

“I bet he did,” Kyl laughed. The sound was so unfamiliar he didn’t even realise it was coming from his mouth until he saw the way she was smiling up at him. 

Somewhere deep in the compound a bell tolled deeply, breaking the moment.

“That’s bedtime.” Mina said. She swept her work up and hopped down from the seat, as if the thought of staying up late would never have occurred to her. She grinned mischievously again. “Papa likes his routine, and I have toys in my room. He never notices if I stay up late so long as I’m in my room.”

Kyl nodded. “Wise. Sleep well.”

“You too…” She hesitated for a moment like there was more she wanted to say, but in the end she turned silently towards her room. 

Alone again, he sat for a while without moving, his gaze fixed on his half-eaten dessert. There were thoughts in his head, but he couldn’t process any of them properly.

He should go to bed. 

He should try to sleep.

Since this morning his impending rut had faded to a background annoyance, so much so that he could almost convince himself it was going to fizzle out without ever properly coming to a head. Perhaps the stress of everything had defused it. Or maybe he’d simply become accustomed to the lack of relief. 

“Caill?” Hux asked quietly from the external doorway, the cool night breeze bringing his scent back into the room to swirl around them. There was still some odd difference in the way Hux said the name to how Kyl heard it in his own head. It made his stomach twist to hear it and set light to something lower.

He was a fool. His rut hadn’t faded at all.

Shambling to his feet, the sensation of twisting distortion spread downward until his legs didn’t feel entirely his own. He had to get out of there and go to bed before he did something else he regretted.

“Good night.” The words felt like boulders in his throat. 

“Good night,” Hux replied, nodding almost mechanically as he moved awkwardly away from the door to stand in the kitchen, out of Kyl’s immediate path. “I’ll be in my room, down that hallway. If you need me.”

It was all Kyl could do to nod in response before he was outside and gasping in the fresh air. 

The door clicked closed. 

This time there was no sound of a lock being turned.

‘If you need me’ echoed in his head as the glow from the window faded with the lowering of the shutters behind him. 

The words followed him as he crossed the yard. They seemed to climb the ladder into the loft ahead of him, and were already waiting amongst the hay he was using as a pillow.

They meant something. 

**Author's Note:**

> [A quick note to assure readers that Unexpected Avenues isn't abandoned, I just really wanted to start this one too. Love to you all, I hope you're doing as well as possible in the current circumstances.]


End file.
